The Third Red Apple

A fashion clueless struggling in Paris. The world is attracted to the light of this city,and me to the history, but the shadow beneath her reveals herself to you eventually. The Parisians are forged thus so attractive is their culture. Why ‘the third red apple?’ A hint maybe in the page available in English and French.

Saturday, 11 August 2018

If the Police kept the records of the city
cameras that night, you would see me, a tiny Japanese woman pushing two chairs twice
the size of herself across Paris.My arm
muscle ached but so did my heart.I
could not adjust to the sobering reality that Mme. Landlord was not quite a philanthropist
that I had believed her to be.

I remembered of this recent cocktail party
held at Mme. Landlord’s apartment.I
felt honored at being invited so I dressed up for the occasion and brought a
thank you gift.Mme. Landlord happily
accepted the gift and seated me on a chair.I marveled at the group of French ladies as I thanked God for allowing
me this rare glimpse into the French socializing scene.Then as more guests arrived I noticed that
colored ladies were being seated near me.Initially I suspected the dark-skinned ladies to be non-French speakers
like me, but no, they turned out to be fluent in French who would have been capable
of joining the discussion among the French guests who were seated the other
side of the room.The only time we were spoken
to, was when Mme. Landlord gleefully boasted of having tolerance for diversity
within her circle.She spoke to her
French peers how she was being respected by me, and that I wanted to repay her
kindness by helping her with the re-doing of her apartment.Indeed, I wanted to prove that I was not an
ungrateful immigrant.My sense of
loyalty prevailed as I suppressed a small prickle in my heart.

However as I carried the heavy chairs up
four stairs up to her apartment alone at midnight after having witnessed the
two faces of Mme. Landlord for the second time,(the first time was described in the episode 82), I had to concede that
I had been used by Mme. Landlord all along.She knew that I was suffering from chronical insomnia because of the unsympathetic
bar-restaurant below me.And yet she
chose to take an advantage of my weak state.Mme. Landlord was the last band of the pyramid of predators.The goliath on the top who bends the order
and morality; the sycophants who conspire to build a system around the Goliath,
leaving a trail of victims that got churned up behind, and at the bottom are
the hyenas who preys on the victims.Profit may not be much, but can achieved with less investment.A hint of kindness is all it takes to extract
whatever left in the wounded victims.Which
one of three types of predators is the worst, I wonder. The Goliath is heartless, the sycophants are shameless, but the hyena may be the most cruel.

It was around this time that I noticed that
things went missing every time Mme. Landlord visited my place.To be continued.

Saturday, 4 August 2018

She was chatting away about her grandson
and how well she was getting along with her son and her daughter in law.Mme. Landlord and I were in Leroy Merlin, a
hardware shop in Paris.Paint needed to
be purchased to paint her apartment, the one that had been left in mess by her
former tenant Jupiter.Not knowing that
she was lying I offered to help with the big task because she had put on an
Oscar performance of a crestfallen old lady.Besides, her son who lives in Paris would surely help his old mother too?To
this Mme. Landlord replied as ‘Oh, no, I cannot ask my son (and his wife).They are raising children.Their time is precious.’ I let pass this
inconsiderate comment about my time being insignificant as a childless single
woman because Mme. Landlord was from the generation when women’s worth was
measured solely by the number of children she bore and raised.She cannot be accused of the general opinion.To her credit, she had shed off racial discrimination
that was prominent among the older generation.

Or had she?Her eyebrow moved up as Mme. Landlord spotted some paints with the reduced
price.She asked a shop assistance if it
was suited for painting over dark color.The assistant replied ‘Non, it is semi-transparent.’Now Jupiter had left black wall papers on the
wall and yet Mme. Landlord wished to paint the walls in light beige. She should
have a professional painter remove the black wall paper or invest in high
quality paint.She chose neither because
the both options were costly. She
purchased the cheap paint and decided that I should paint many layers to
compensate the poor quality.And yet
such was my loyalty to her that I did not oppose.I wished to help her economize, just like I
did all the printing jobs she needed for nearly two years.

I had to carry all the heavy cans of paint
back to her apartment because Mme. Landlord would not spend 50 euros for
delivery. Mme. Landlord thought I
deserved some reward and served me a pumpkin soup.It was the weakest soup that I had ever
tasted that even water would have had more flavor, but ‘it is the thought that
counts’ I told myself.Then one of her
gentleman friends knocked on the door.She had asked him to come give her some advice on the best way to paint
her apartment.I was amazed by her
transformation.She behaved coy and
flirtish, her voice was a pitch higher than the one she would use with me.Well, that’s French woman for you, I was
amused…until she started telling lies.

The gentleman said the painting of the
entire apartment was a bit much for an amateur woman like me.He advised Mme. Landlord to use a good quality
paint to compensate for my want of stamina and experience.I was relieved that he had spoken some sense
into her, however, Mrs. Landlord replied ‘oh, I have bought the best that the
shop recommended to me.’My French had
improved enough to understand her lies, but my speaking ability was never to be
on par with a native speaker.As soon as
I opened my mouth and uttered a few words of French, Mme. Landlord spoke over
me to shut me up.She went on to say to
the gentleman that it was me who insisted on doing this favor for Mme. Landlord
because I wished to repay her for her kind services.It was true, but the minute she boasted it publicly,
it lost its class.I felt used by Mme.
Landlord to impress her gentleman friend. She went on to plead him to tie two chairs
on a small lorry.The gentleman obliged
and asked if she wanted him to deliver the chairs to her other apartment.Mme. Landlord declined saying that she could
not be so impolite to her good friend.And
yet, as soon as the gentleman left, she turned around, back in her normal tone,
and told me to deliver her chairs across the old town of Paris at 23:30 at
night.On her lips there was a sheepish smile,
but her eyes were malicious.

Sunday, 29 July 2018

After the phone call, I felt like a fool that I
had just spent a whole day feeling lousy about myself for having denied Mme.
Harmonie the access through my apartment. Caution told me to have the message heard by a French speaker,
but I was convinced that she was making a demand that she did not deserve to
make. So, I wrote another refusal message to Mr. Pride and the
syndic, adding that I did not appreciate the aggressive tone of Mme.
Harmonie. She never sugarcoats her words, which even her own
employee admitted to me later, but I did not know that her usual tone was less
soft than other French speakers.

Thus,
I was astonished when I received an email from her that she did not call me
that day.

It turned out that I had replayed her old message making plans for
our first meeting, which took place a month ago. A mistake is a
mistake, so I apologized to her in writing immediately. Part of
Japanese culture is ‘swift apology’. Japan is too small a nation to
live with a reputation of ‘a loser who does not acknowledge one’s
mistake.’ The only case we stubbornly refuse to apologize is when
the recipients have elaborated the facts. We have compassion for the
victims, but not any more if the victims turn into something else who treat the
compensations they received like it never happened.

Back to my mistake. I had jumped to the conclusion. Mme.
Harmonie deserved an apology. She further demanded a public apology in writing,
which was fine except she also criticized Mme. Landlord whom I still adored at
the time in the same email. I had also heard that Mme. Harmonie had
spoken rudely to Mme. Landlord who accused the restaurant for having dumped
their commercial rubbish into the residential area. I felt I had let
down Mme. Landlord, so, I wrote an apology note to everyone in the building
about my mistake, adding my plea to Mme. Harmonie that she should leave Mme.
Landlord alone after this.

That night I wondered why I did not practice my usual caution
before accusing Mme. Harmonie, and then realized with horror that I was acting
with the sense of license as a victim of the restaurant from Hell. That
it was so easy to blame someone without checking the facts, shocked me. I
felt self-righteous and blamed someone for something she did not commit. In
a beat I shifted from a victim to a perpetrator. Disgusting but I
had acted like Mr. Justice, the most hypocrite of all! (Please,
refer to the episode 71~73 for the details about Mr. Justice, or http://www.thethirdredapple.com/2018/04/the-bullied-takes-on-goliath-in-true_29.html)

I became afraid for my soul. The traditional potion
passed down through my family protected my body, and the teaching of my Samurai
ancestors saved my sanity, but my soul was still weak. I finally
acknowledged the importance of religion. Their function was to
shield our soul from corruption. My soul was in jeopardy indeed. However,
it was not just the restaurant from Hell that pushed me towards the religion. It
was Mme. Landlord, an atheist who dared to take over the God.

Sunday, 22 July 2018

I am not above revenge, but it is necessary
to take a realistic approach to it, considering the time and effort one must
invest in the process.Probably the most
common motive would be the desire to make your enemy regret his or her past
conducts, which may be possible if the enemy was an individual, but not if you
fell prey to a collective perpetrator.There
is less fear with breaking laws together with one’s partners in crime.There is no guilt in forsaking a human being
in a long physically pain if you can blame someone else for the choice.The characters involved in the restaurant
from Hell (Mr. Pride, Mme. Empathy, Mme. Harmony, Mr. Brave) have stomped all
over their neighbors for nearly 18 months and still have slept well at night
because it is a typical lynch mentality.The notion of regret will never come to them.Thus, I must treat this like an accident just
like the time a couple of Colombian men robbed money from me through
threat.Sure, I felt sick at the time, but
it passed and the same will happen with the restaurant from Hell too.

Or will it?The encounter was brief and one-off with the criminals, but I had already
been exposed to the restaurant from Hell for more than one year when the Syndic
contacted me about Mr. Pride’s new demand.The restaurant needed to access my apartment to fix a leak on their low roof.Normally I would be more than happy to oblige,
but Mme. Harmonie had just told me to live with my windows closed forever.She flatly refused to insulate her kitchen
ceiling unlike many other decent restaurant owners in Paris.And now she was sending workers into my
studio through the Syndic so she did not need to say ‘please’ to me.Pouring oil onto fire was another email sent by
her partner demanding that I must cooperate for the comfort of the clients of
the restaurant.Comfort?!I had been robbed of good night sleep for 12 months
at this point.In the end I would
cooperate, but I could not roll over and accept the tyranny immediately.So, I denied them access.

I was feeling lousy about myself when my phone
rang. I missed it, so I dialed 666 to
retrieve the message.I was on the busy
street when I heard a woman’s message in French.I did not catch each word, but it was Mme.
Harmonie.Under the situation I thought she
was repeating the same demand on me directly.The action I took following this call, made me realize that my soul had
begun to be affected by the dark side.I
do not recommend revenge because longer you are exposed to the darkness, higher
the risk of joining the dark side.This
has to be the most tragic thing that could happen to you, but a long stress
will weaken your defense eventually.To
be continued.

Sunday, 15 July 2018

I have deleted my last update which
deviated from the updates of my true struggles in Paris.I wish to make up by responding to the
suggestion made by my loyal follower. Christopher Meade (a writer, funny and compassionate) was so indignant about the calculating Mme. Landlord, that he suggested that I
should take revenge in the comment section of episode 78.Appeasing thought and I am only human.

However, I must first analyze the process
that I got taken in by this experienced hyena so that I will not repeat the
same mistake.Hard as it is, I must take
my responsibility for having fallen…a victim.I hesitate there because I dislike this word, more precisely, the people
who refer to themselves as ‘victims’ as if it is a license.Apart from children and the physically weak, there
is no such a thing as blameless victims.Greed makes people fall for scams.Lack of preparation makes you lose.In my case underestimating the weak was my undoing.Mme. Landlord was ill when I first met
her.Foolishly I believed she was too
sick to harbor any evil thoughts.I should
have remembered that some women have dedicated good many years of their life caring
their sick lovers, only to be dumped after their lovers have regained their
health, walking away with a new, often younger, girlfriend.In the case of Mme. Landlord, as soon as her
cancer was contained, she reverted back to a money mongler who would extort even
from her allies.It was not just me, but
there was other landlords whom she would extort compensation for her cooked up
stories.I am more a fool than a victim
to have missed seeing her true color in the early days. I succumbed to the temptation of the role of a
virtuous woman befriending a sick lady and fighting evils with her.It is extremely hard to admit but it was my
vanity that I lost my future as a graphic novelist.I cannot with this wrist now.I may be able to write some pages slowly, but
that is not going to cut it in the professional world.Not that I ever had any chance, but now I
have none for sure.

Another reason for my misjudgment was the
existence of the even bigger devil, the restaurant from hell.I was blown away by their audacity to present
themselves as decent lots while breaking many regulations regarding
restaurant business. The religion was
used to justify the corruption which I abruptly stopped writing its details
because I got scared.The collective
evil overshadowed the individual evil of Mme. Landlord.But there is one thing they have in common:
they both refer to themselves as ‘victims.’The restaurant folks lament that they are being unfairly persecuted by
the heartless neighbors and Mme. Landlord referred to herself as ‘a good person
betrayed.’This convenient shift between
‘predator’ and ‘victim’ is a lot worse than a solid predator.However, after being exposed to them for many
months I realized that it was easier than I thought to slip into this pattern.I shall share what happened to me in my next
update because......tonight is the final of Coupe du Monde.I wish to end this post with my respect to
the two nations.The French who remain sympathetic to migrants even though they suffer
reverse-discrimination in their own land. Cudos for the Croatians who remained modest despite their success during the world
cup, keeping to themselves any negative views about other teams.But what I had not expected was that one
individual would rise above all the national flags and shine as the epitome of
World Cup 2018:Mr. Luka Modric.His pleasant but calm existence is so
reassuring.It does not matter which
flag wins tonight. His existence and the
memory will define the world cup 2018 in years to come.It is the
triumph of individual which is so gratifying to
me who got crushed by the collective power aka corruption.To be continued.